ECU men’s basketball coach Jeff Lebo (center) said his team’s series with UNCW is good for everybody. (Jesse Fath/StarNews)

Of course, Jeff Lebo knows Kevin Keatts, at least a little bit.

A Division I basketball coach on the East Coast couldn’t afford to ignore Hargrave Military Academy when it was regularly pumping out top prospects during Keatts’ tenure at the Virginia prep school.

“Everybody’s been through there to see them,” Lebo said.

Lebo, who was in Wilmington Thursday for a stop on ECU’s annual coaches’ caravan, will get to coach against Keatts next season when he brings the Pirates to Trask Coliseum for the second leg of a four-game series. UNCW won, 70-68, on Dec. 1 at Minges Coliseum, clinching the victory on a Cedrick Williams block at the buzzer.

It was the teams’ first meeting since December 2008. They have played five times since ECU left the CAA in 2001. UNCW has won 12 of the past 16 meetings overall, dating back to 1996.

“It’s been a good game,” said Lebo, who has a 73-61 in four seasons at ECU. “There’s been a lot of interest in that game, so we decided to start it back up.”

East Carolina makes the jump to the American Athletic Conference next season. Joining a conference anchored by former Big East schools Connecticut and Cincinnati, plus NCAA Tournament regular Memphis, is a boon for the Pirates’ quest to become a more national brand. On the basketball court, it will take an adjustment for a team that went 17-17 last year in a weaker league.

Lebo said he’s hopeful the conference musical chairs is coming to an end.

“It’s settled down now, all the moving and shaking and changing leagues,” Lebo said. “It’s exciting for us to go where we’re going, but hopefully all the movement will start to stop. There’s a lot of things about having rivalries that’s kind of changed. People have moved leagues, and they’re in leagues with people they don’t know even who they are. There’s been a point when I don’t even know who is in certain leagues.”

That’s an opinion that could bode well for the future of the ECU-UNCW series. The Pirates dive into a league with some teams they used to compete against in Conference USA, but it’s hard to feel like there are any true rivalries there.

ECU fans will have plenty to be excited about with the schedule next year, especially with a visit from defending national champ UConn likely. It might be nice to keep the regional rivalry with UNCW going beyond the current agreement that will end with the 2017-2018 season, though.

Plus, it’s convenient for everybody.

“Our travel is so hard and so is there’s,” Lebo said. “To be able to get on a bus and go two hours to a game is nice. That’s easy.”